If police pull a motorist over for a traffic violation, fine. That’s their job. But what if they pull someone over when their real desire is to search the car for drugs — not because they have probable cause but as part of a random drug checkpoint?

That’s what Westminster police did last week, the Boulder Daily Camera reported. They set out signs saying “Drug Checkpoint Ahead” on U.S. 36 and stopped 23 cars for what police spokesman Trevor Materasso described as “some identified violation.”

The curious thing is, however, that only three tickets were issued. Meanwhile, as the Camera explained, an unknown number of the cars were searched “and one man was arrested on suspicion of felony marijuana possession,” meaning he was found with more than 12 ounces.

Presumably that man was selling it, and it’s good to get such characters off the street. But does that lone arrest justify stopping 22 others, the vast majority of whom hadn’t done anything that deserved a ticket?

Call us skeptical.

Materasso described the tactic as “a key public safety resource and tool to do drug interdiction.” Later, he told the Colorado Independent that the drug interdiction checkpoint was “established based on training provided by the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and Homeland Security, which has guidelines, protocols and procedures to ensure Constitutional rights are not violated.”

Yet just because a policy does not, strictly speaking, violate constitutional rights hardly means it earns an A-plus for respecting civil liberties.

We realize that DUI sobriety checkpoints were found constitutional by the Supreme Court years ago, under the dubious (in our view) reasoning that the “minimal intrusion on individual liberties” is overwhelmed by the interest in abating highway accidents. But random stops to search for drugs have nothing to do with highway safety.

The public would be outraged if police selected apartment buildings for random searches on the possibly correct assumption that one of 20 apartments were likely to contain contraband. We should reject random checks of cars for similar reasons.

Just months ago, Republicans got away with a massive upward redistribution of wealth, raiding $1.5 trillion from the Treasury and sticking future generations with the bill. Now, they're going for more.